Family honors late professor by establishing scholarships in his name

A $200,000 endowment established by the Gupta family will honor the late longtime FIU Distinguished University Professor Sushil Gupta by supporting students in two fields that shaped his work and his vision for the future.

The Dr. Sushil K. Gupta Scholarship Endowment in Logistics & Supply Chain Management will provide scholarships through the College of Business, and a second endowment in Gupta’s name will support students in the College of Engineering & Computing.

Gupta’s devotion to FIU and his students inspired the family to create the scholarships. They described the endowment as a way to “keep his spirit alive” at the university and continue his impact on future students.

A professor of information systems and business analytics at FIU Business, Gupta conducted research in a various areas, including production scheduling, mathematical modeling, project management, supply chain management, e-business and disaster management. FIU tapped him in 2021 to lead a faculty team focused on supply chain research and curriculum development as the PayCargo Professor.

His reach extended well beyond FIU. Gupta was among the founding members of the Production and Operations Management Society, or POMS, and later served as its president in 1996 and executive director from 1997 to 2025. He was elected a POMS Fellow in 2004 and received the society’s first Distinguished Service Award in 2012. Beginning the following year, the honor became the Sushil K. Gupta POMS Distinguished Service Award.

The family hopes the scholarships will reflect the same dedication to teaching, learning and exchanging ideas that Gupta, who passed away last year at the age of 79, brought to his work. Supporting both supply chain and computing was intentional.

Subodha Kumar, executive director of POMS, said Gupta recognized early on that advances in supply chain management would increasingly depend on computing, data and information systems.

“Supporting students across both areas wasn't really supporting two separate groups; it was investing in the kind of integrated thinking the field would need,” Kumar said. Problems involving coordination, optimization and resilience increasingly require knowledge of both supply chains and computer science, he added. “Professor Gupta saw that bridge clearly, and he wanted to build people who could stand on it.”

Gupta also served FIU as vice provost and director of planning and institutional research and later as associate dean for research in the College of Engineering.

Kumar said the scholarships also capture a more personal part of Gupta’s legacy: a conviction that financial circumstances should not stand between talented students and opportunity.

“He believed talent shouldn't be limited by resources,” Kumar said. “His generosity was practical and personal, not abstract.”

Additional contributions may be made to the Dr. Sushil K. Gupta Scholarship Endowments in the FIU College of Business and the FIU College of Engineering & Computing.